Chapter 15 : Chapter 15
Chapter 15: The Route Map
Chen Guan could not even be bothered wasting words on them and simply asked directly,
“When do we leave?”
Luo Li turned her gaze toward Luo Tong, since the old man looked imposing and seemed very formidable.
Luo Tong stroked his graying beard, looked up at the sky, and said in a deep voice,
“The hour is still early. It is now the Hour of Si, when yang qi is at its strongest.”
“With the twenty-five of us gathered here, I doubt that thing called Do Not Look Back would dare come out and cause trouble lightly. In this old man’s opinion, why not depart after noon? What do you think?”
“All right.” Luo Li nodded, then instinctively looked toward Chen Guan.
Chen Guan also nodded. “Fine.”
Only then did Luo Li come back to herself.
Why did I even ask him?
In truth, what she was thinking was that she ought to properly test this fellow on the road and see what was so special about him.
Yet in her heart, her grandfather’s words still circled endlessly, and instinctively she still felt that he was the more reliable one.
...
The group remained at the Su residence and enjoyed a sumptuous midday meal.
After the meal, Su Yue personally helped Luo Li arrange her luggage. She stuffed three entire wagons full of local specialties and precious medicinal herbs, each one drawn by a tall, sturdy horse.
Then, at the very end, she also assigned each escort master a fine steed capable of running a thousand li in a day.
In these remote mountain regions, horses were in fact not as expensive as pigs. Generally, three to five taels of silver were enough to buy a fine horse.
The main reason was that horses spent all year out in the wilderness and possessed an innate sharpness toward the aura of demons, monsters, and uncanny fiends.
Compared with other livestock, they were easier to keep alive, and they were also the most numerous domesticated beasts.
That was because they often sensed danger before it truly approached, and thus could avoid it in advance, greatly increasing their chances of survival.
In this way, they had practically driven down their own price.
Even so, such attentive treatment still made those twenty-four escort masters so happy they could barely close their mouths.
For the entire afternoon, they attended Luo Li from front to back, asking after her comfort with constant care, truly treating her like a little ancestor to be enshrined and served.
Luo Li once more experienced that feeling of being held up like the moon among stars, and once again resumed the cold and aloof bearing that she normally wore.
Only, from time to time, those bright, watery eyes of hers kept darting toward Chen Guan, who stood alone in the distance.
That gaze held equal parts flaunting, scrutiny, and curiosity.
Once everything had been fully prepared, Chen Guan wandered into the stables outside the courtyard and casually picked a horse that looked relatively docile. With a light press of his toe against the stirrup, he swung up into the saddle in one smooth motion.
When the other escort masters saw that he had actually chosen such an “obedient” horse, the disdain in their eyes became even less concealed.
Any escort knew that only wild-tempered, violent horses were suited to the escort roads.
That was because fierce horses had the sharpest instincts, and could give warning the instant demon fiends approached.
Only inexperienced greenhorns would choose the kind of horse that was meek and easy to handle.
On the other side, after a long string of parting instructions between Luo Li and Su Yue, Luo Li finally waved reluctantly.
Then, amid the ingratiating spectacle of one escort master voluntarily dropping to the ground to serve as a human footstool, she climbed into the middle carriage, the most splendid of the three.
The corner of Chen Guan’s mouth twitched at the sight.
Damn it, this was his first real long-distance escort. He had originally planned to learn a little about long-route escort work from these people, but now his interest was gone before it even began.
“I trouble all of you Escort Masters to look after her on the road. Once you arrive safely, Su will surely reward you generously!”
Su Yue still seemed somewhat uneasy, and in the end she tossed out one more weighty promise.
“Madam Su is too courteous! Please rest assured!”
The escort masters immediately brightened and all cupped their fists in thanks.
Su Yue’s gaze drifted toward the rear of the convoy, where Chen Guan stood unnoticed and unspeaking. A strange look flickered through her eyes.
“Little Aunt, take care of yourself!” From inside the carriage, Luo Li waved one last time, then instructed the escort driving her carriage, “Let’s go.”
“Hyah!”
With a crisp crack of the whip, the wheels began to turn, letting out creaking groans. After half a day of delay, the journey finally resumed.
Before leaving, Chen Guan’s gaze swept briefly across Su Yue and the maid called Xi’er standing beside her. Just as before, his brows drew together ever so slightly, almost without leaving a trace.
When the convoy arrived at the gates of Wangyue City, they found the place already packed wall to wall with people. At a rough glance, there had to be at least five or six hundred.
All of these people wanted to latch onto the escort convoy and leave the city together with them.
No one refused them. As escorts, they possessed at least that much breadth of spirit.
...
Not long afterward, a mighty, winding procession formed outside the city gates and slowly rolled out of Wangyue City.
Chen Guan kept far from the clamor, trailing alone at the very back of the convoy, yet he did not relax his vigilance in the slightest.
Nearly every minute or two, his eyes would sweep the surroundings once, missing not so much as the faintest rustle of wind or grass.
This was a habit he had developed over the years walking the jianghu, and it was also one of the rules he had always kept—once he accepted an escort and took the money, then he would fulfill his duty with utmost care and deliver the employer safely to the destination.
Once they passed beyond the bounds of Wangyue City, the itinerant merchants and common folk traveling with them split away and went their separate ways.
Then, upon the official road winding through the mountains and forests, only the three carriages remained, along with twenty-five mounted escorts surrounding Luo Li’s carriage in the center as they thundered into a dense stretch of woodland.
At once, everyone felt a kind of pressure descending upon them.
That pressure did not come from the towering mountain peaks stabbing straight into the clouds before them.
Rather, it came from a strange and savage aura of primordial wilderness—an indescribable yin force mixed together with demonic qi and monster qi.
This place was the edge of the Ten Directions Marsh.
At the very rear of the convoy, Chen Guan swept a vigilant glance over the surroundings.
He looked first toward the distant mountain range, then toward the thick, green-shadowed forest nearby.
After confirming that there was nothing unusual within a radius of one li, he moved his thoughts and opened the system panel visible only to himself.
【Mission: Escort Luo Li to Shangjing City of Great Zhou】
【Route Map】On/Off
With a thought, Chen Guan directly switched on the Route Map.
At once, a translucent map slowly unfolded before his eyes.
There was nothing particularly miraculous about this map. It was more like some sort of navigation chart from a later age, capable at any moment of confirming his location and identifying the name of the place where he stood, though it could not directly mark danger.
Its greatest advantage, however, was that it could help him plan the route in advance and avoid certain known dangerous regions on a broad level.
Chen Guan examined the route for this journey from beginning to end with extreme care.
That examination was one thing—but after finishing it, even with his temperament, he could not help letting his face darken.
“This seems a bit of a loss.”
He had originally assumed that, between the routes of the two countries, this escort would be at most three to four thousand li.
But according to the shortest distance carefully plotted on the map, it actually exceeded six thousand li. At this rate, the trip would likely take two or even three months.
And over the past few years, the farthest escort he had ever walked had only been fifteen hundred li.
Whether it was a loss or not, since he had already accepted it, there was no room for regret. He immediately turned solemn.
This was the first ultra-long-distance escort he had ever taken, and right from the start it was six thousand li. He could not afford the slightest carelessness.
He focused his mind and began carefully planning the first stage of their route.
This place was called the Qingcang Mountains, located on the eastern border of the Great Yun Dynasty.
As for their final destination, the Great Zhou Imperial Dynasty, it lay directly to the north of here. Their current direction of travel was from south to north, making it almost a straight line.
If they went straight for eight hundred li and emerged from this endless mountain range, they would reach a border city called Yunshui City.
He fixed Yunshui City as the first major destination.
Before that, however, they still had to find several sufficiently safe footholds within the mountains where they could stop and rest.
Very soon, he found several scattered mountain towns marked within the range.
The nearest of them was roughly three hundred li from here, and its name was Heishi Town.
Once he had formed a rough route plan in his head, Chen Guan closed the map.
He swept another glance over the surroundings, and after confirming that there was no immediate danger, he simply leaned back against the horse’s back and closed his eyes to rest.
Just then, perhaps because she felt somewhat stifled within the carriage, Luo Li lifted the curtain and quietly poked her head outside.
At a glance, she saw Chen Guan trailing at the rear of the convoy—and that fellow was actually leaning against his horse’s back, sound asleep in broad daylight.